-41— 



out into other prothalli. Osmunda regalis does this, and Pteris 

 aquiliua occasionally ; each prothallus then produces a plant so 

 that a single spore yields quite a crop. In 1874 Professor Farlow 

 discovered that in Pteris ere tic a the prothallus produced the fern 

 by simple .budding and without sexual action, and Professor De- 

 Bary following this up, established the singular fact that our well- 

 known crested Male fern always produces its youngsters in this 

 fashion, its name being curiously enough justified by the constant 

 absence of the female organs. This is called Apogamy or sup- 

 pression of marriage. The next discovery was that of Aposporv 

 by myself in 1885. This, as you know, consists in prothalli being 

 developed directly from the frond without the agency of the 

 spore. A very beautiful form of the lady fern had been observed 

 for twenty years to produce abortive spore heaps and conse- 

 quently all attempts at raising it had failed. Certain discoveries 

 of mine in connection with the bulbils of other ferns led to pinna 

 of this fern being sent to me. I pegged the material down, kept 

 it close and watched it. To my surprise it began to grow vigor- 

 ously at once and in course of time produced dense clusters of 

 irregular prothalli all over the backs of the pinnules. Early in 

 the following May a crop of young ferns made its appearance, 

 and in June I exhibited them at the Linnaan Society and de- 

 scribed their genesis. — Abridged from a paper by Charles T. 

 Druery before the British Pteridological Society, 1S95. 



A CORRECTION. 



IN reading the proof of the reprint from my Bermuda ferns, in 

 the last number of The Fern Bulletin, we all overlooked the 

 fact that no name was given to the fern described. The name 

 should have been given as Acrostic hiu?n lomarioides Jenman. I 

 noticed the omission the moment my eyes rested on the article in 

 The Fern Bulletin ; but, like the proofreader, I seemed oblivious 

 to the absence of the name in simply reading the slip of proof. 



In a letter recently received from Mr. Jenman, he says: 

 " Acrostichium loniarioides Jenm. is a very distinct and robust 

 species compared to A. aureum L., both of which are very abun- 

 dant here (i. c, in Demerara) in the swamps of the coast lands. 

 All the characters are different, not only in part, but the whole. It 

 is frequent, too, in the West Indies." 



Our southern botanists should now hunt up this species in 

 Florida and give us some definite stations for it. The one on 

 "St. John's River," given by Eaton, is rather too vague to be sat- 

 isfactory. — B. D. Gilbert. 



